As a result, on most nights Alice falls right asleep and doesn't peep until her next feeding.
This all changed last weekend.
For Valentines Day Tony gave me the freedom to go to a movie all by my lonesome.
On Tony's birthday this week I paid him back in kind. A whole slew of friends (including all the Howe siblings) came to Austin to see "Watchmen" at the Alamo Drafthouse. So I took over baby duty while the group took Tony to a night of movie joy and drinking.
The revellers returned full of good cheer and they even brought me a cookie in the shape of the Watchmen logo (smiley face with a blood stain), it was delicious. Most of the folks were planing to sleep at our place after a long night of chat and board game fun.
The group kept the celebrations down to a whisper for Alice's sake. But at midnight she woke up screaming. Tony gamely went to take care of her for the first shift, and that is when everything fell apart.
Poor kid had the perfect storm of teething pain, a bad cold, and a diaper that had not seen poop in several days. We had to keep Alice upright so she could breathe and sleep a bit. Even so, she woke up every twenty minuets crying her little heart out. It was horrible. We tried to keep the chaos to a minimum for the sake of our upstairs guests but failed pretty miserably. I couldn't wait for the night to end. As a happy coincidence we lost an hour that night. Never been happier to "Spring Forward".
When the sun came up we tried to sneak out of the house (coffee for us and a sleep inducing drive for Alice). Before we made it out of the driveway some of our guests drove up. They had bought us breakfast. Thank you Chiara and Amber! We were assured that no one heard a peep out of Alice in the night. It was a very friendly lie.
Now several days later Alice is feeling much better and even sleeping comfortably flat on her back.
In an effort to re-boot my engines Tony kindly took the kid on a two hour drive in the car so she could sleep and I could nap. He even listened to classical music the whole time to soothe her. She must have been pretty relaxed because that several days missing poop...yeah she painted the whole backseat. Happy Birthday Tony!!
5 comments:
ooh...hellish!
Did you steam clean and hose the nose? we've always had good luck with that...
You know it! Everything is washable these days. The baby, the car, the cat. Poor kitty.
actually, I was referring to Dr. Sears' recipe for baby's nose:
1. steam clean (one parent holds baby in the bathroom while other parent showers nice and hot and steams the nose clean...)
2. hose the nose: a mixture of salt and water that is squirted, gently, up the nose.
this formula has saved us many hours of sleep
Ah, yes. We did indeed have many hours in the bathroom before we got a salt water steamer set up by her bed.
Alice hates having anything up her nose and she is crazy strong so squirting is a tricky affair.
But yes, that was our solution too.
Prepare for the ride...good luck.
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